A Creature of Moonlight (25 page)

She would have been afraid for her life, and she would have had nowhere left to go. Not home, to her enraged brother. Not to the woods, not with her baby. This was her final hope. This was her last chance to be free.

And me? There are a thousand places I could go. I could go back up the mountain and let the dragon turn me into some great wild beast. I could continue south until I make it out of the woods altogether, and then I could run back to my uncle and spit in his eye.

I could stay here in front of these stones—stare at them until the rain and the wind wear me away, or until I grow roots, like a girl in a story, and turn into my namesake tulip, bright and bold and helpless.

Then, with the wind blowing through the trees and the sunlight glinting on the two stones, it comes to me: a memory so deep it's been well buried for years and years, so long I'd think I was making it up, except I know it's true. I've become so still inside, so empty in the last months that now I can touch each thought within me, feel its texture, its importance. This one is bright and sharp and real. This one makes my heart beat fast, before I even know what it's about.

 

First, there was a sword. It scraped from its scabbard, harsh, like the first loud sound on a day when you've had no sleep. It shone in the sun, clean, bright. It was mesmerizing. I was watching from the doorway, and I saw it all, and I saw the way the lords, my mother, my Gramps, even my uncle watched the steel gleam, as if it wasn't theirs to control, as if they'd nothing to do with it.

The body of my mother's servant already lay on the ground.

My mother didn't try to run when my uncle swung the sword her way. My Gramps did—not away, but toward her, dropping his horse's reins, pushing through the lords, who stood silent, as if turned to stone.

The woods were whispering my mother's name.

My uncle drew back his hand, and a spark struck from the sword's tip. My Gramps screamed. I remember that. It wasn't my mother. She stood straight, maybe in disbelief, maybe in acceptance. But my Gramps screamed, and it was a sound that made my breathing come fast, as it hadn't before, not when these visitors rode up all grim-faced, not even when that sword scraped free—and I left the doorway to clamber down the steps, stumbling as well, toward my mother.

It was so fast, I could have missed it. As my uncle slid the sword forward, my Gramps reached him, grabbed at his arm, and my uncle swung the sword his way almost without looking, as hard as anything, and my Gramps crumpled to the ground. And then, easy, as if it were nothing, my uncle swung his sword back again and then forward, one steady motion. When he drew it back once more, my mother folded with only a sigh, and it was done.

My uncle turned toward me then. I'd stopped before reaching them, as my thoughts had stopped, as the world had stopped, as the whispers through the woods had stopped, cut off with my mother's breath. My Gramps—though I'd never met him then—said, through his pain, “Roderick, let the girl live . . . I'll give you the kingdom.”

My uncle looked down at his father and around at his men, who were shifting now, their eyes wide. He held his sword to the side, and a lord came to take it from him at once. Then he looked at me again, long and steady. I saw that darkness in his face for the very first time, and there wasn't a speck of guilt there, and he didn't come over to comfort me or speak some gentle word. Still holding my gaze, his voice flat, he said, “We'll see. If this is enough to stop them, she can live.” Then another lord came forward to lift my mother, and I didn't see anything more because someone was raising me onto a horse, and my Gramps behind me.

“What's your name then, little one?” he said into my ear. I could hear the scream left over in his words, a harsh scrape like the scrape of that sword as it slid out into the light.

“Marni,” I said. His arms were tight around me. I watched the soft spot between the horse's twitching ears.

“Marni,” he repeated, bending round to look me in the face. “I am to be your Gramps.” I saw for the first time those deep, intense eyes, that already silvering hair, the determination that never once faded, that saved me then and kept me living all those long years to come. It's an expression I've never seen in the lady's face, nor in the dragon's, nor in any of the woods folk's. Those of the woods can't help what they do. If they say they can't live without you, or that they'll make a bargain but otherwise they'll take your land and your people, or if they send you tempting dreams to draw you out of your dull, everyday life, through the woods, and up into the wind-strewn sky—well, you can't much blame them for it. It's who they are, and they can't go and change it.

But people, now. We're not as strong as they are, or as clever, or as filled to dripping with all sorts of unnatural powers. We can't lead them to their deaths with a light so bright and beautiful it's like to make you cry. We can't promise them impossible things and then deliver, hand them their every wish on a golden platter.

Could be, though, that we've got something just as terrifying, something just as likely to confound them.

It's what my Gramps had when he stepped in front of my uncle's blade and when he spoke for me, a crying little thing he'd never seen before, and gave up his throne to keep me safe.

It's what my mother had when she ran as fast as she could from the dragon and all his people, and the prince and all his army, for the sake of the tiny spark inside her that was going to be me.

It's what the queen had when she freed me from the city prison, well knowing that the king would near to kill her if he found out.

It's what I had, I guess, when I turned the dragon's spell inside out, and when I told the Lord of Ontrei I'd not marry him, and when I stayed with my Gramps all those years when I could have gone off to the woods.

It's our choices. It's our changing, every day, into creatures who might do something completely different from the day before. It's our stupid stubbornness and our constant unpredictability, and the irrational way we have of holding on to our love, our anger, our hate, letting them grow within us until they're a part of us as sure as our hands and feet, as sure as the laughter that catches on our breath, the moonlit tears in our eyes.

It's a magic too, in its way, and times are I reckon the dragon's happy to leave us our kingdom, happy to stay away.

After all, it didn't do him much good to send his trees after her, did it? She was only right next door, and he didn't dare come get her. The woods were whispering her name that day, so why didn't he send them in to save her? It bounds around inside my head, that thought, that question, and I can't get rid of it, no more than I can make the names on these stones leap up into people, laughing, smiling at me, knowing me for the baby girl that learned to sit up and clap her hands, and made herself dirty digging in the flowers, and watched the leaves flutter on the dragon's trees for the first time right in this same garden.

I open my palm and look down at it, at the ring gleaming softly in the sunlight. I lift it between my first finger and my thumb, and I slide it onto the middle finger of my left hand. I twist it round. It's snug; it will stay.

As I pull my right hand away, I brush against my vengeance. It unfolds itself, drifts out from my arm. It hovers, looking at me. It's still wondering what I want.
The king?
it asks, and somehow I hear it clear in my head.
I'll kill the king?

And yes, it is his fault. It wasn't hers, the woman who stood so still before that sword. It wasn't mine, the tiny thing that watched and then buried the memory so deep I only now found it again.

But it wasn't as simple as just being his fault, neither. And anyway, here, with those stones staring back at me, I've not the will to wish for death. There's only one thing I want, and no magic could give it to me.

So I shake my head at my making. It's soft in the light, insubstantial, drifting like a kite or a thought. I say, “I want the woman this ring belongs to,” and I lift up my hand for the vengeance to see.

It comes closer. It wraps itself round my finger, curls between the gold band and my skin.
A princess?
it says.
A darling princess?

“She was,” I say. “She was a princess. Not anymore.”

I will bring her to you
. It unwraps itself from my finger, pulls away.
Wait here
. Then it's gone, up into the sky, over the woods, lost in the bright white sun.

It makes my eyes tear up to think on that moonlight thing traveling the world over, looking for a person who doesn't exist. Could be it'll keep on forever. Could be it'll pull itself to bits and fade away and disappear, still searching for nothing. My wrist is bare without it, but I twist the ring again, and I don't miss it.

There's something else I ought to be doing. Cutting flowers or some such to leave with them. But there's nothing here, only weeds and rocks. I don't even feel the urge to clean their stones, to make the words show clear. It's right to let the grasses cover them over. It's right to let them fall back into the way of things.

So I only kneel down and press my cheek against their names, first the one I don't know and then the one I do, the one that threads its way into my dreams and hopes and tears. I stay like that as the air grows cool, warming her stone with my skin.

I
AM WAVERING
.

I don't leave the clearing all the next day, or the next. I don't know what I am to do.

Or, I know what I am to do, but I don't know if I can do it. I escaped from the dragon, yes, but that was only barely. I ran from his folk, but I got away only because I never stopped running, never turned to look back at them, never gave them a moment to get inside my head again.

Could be, if I darted to the south, I'd make it out through the last of the trees before the little ones surrounded me, before the lady grabbed me tight. That's where I was running when I landed here: to the king's land, back to my mother's kind, back to my Gramps. Then, I thought only of getting away, nothing of what happens after that. Nothing of what happened when
she
went back.

Now, though, sitting by my mother's stone, I can't stop thinking on it, and I know I can't go south. Instead, I'm readying myself for that last climb, where I might well lose myself forever. I'm readying myself to answer the question that needs answering.

When you've been running for so long, it's not an easy thing to stop, to turn yourself around and look clear at what you've been running from. It's easier to sit, and twist your mother's ring, and feel the breeze drift past. It's easier to wait today, and then tomorrow.

It's the next day, not long before midday, that I hear crashing through the trees off to the west. The dragon's folk have been flitting here and there in the woods round about the clearing since I arrived. They make their own sorts of noises, but those blend in with the wind and the soft padding of the ordinary beasts. This crashing isn't from a fairy or even a griffin or a phoenix. It's the sort of clumsy noise that sounds all through the woods—the sort that comes only from someone not caring if anyone hears, or not aware enough to realize what they're doing. The sort that comes only from a human.

Could be it's another girl, another Thea, running off to the dragon. But it's a louder crashing than one young girl would make, and girls never run off together. Then I hear a whinny, soft, but it threads its way through the trees to me. And then I hear a voice, calming: “It's all right, girl.” It's a voice I've heard in my head many times since I left the castle, as I'm knitting with the lady, as I'm sitting in the cave looking out over the mountains and remembering conversations, laughter, the warmth of velvet chairs and a fire.

It's not a voice I've heard in truth, though, for many long months.

I'm standing before I think it. I'm across the clearing, to the edge of the western woods. The speaking owl there swivels its head to stare at me. The little ones push themselves almost out of the woods' grasses, gnashing their teeth, waving their weapons.

She's moving northward. She's almost past the clearing.

“Aunt!” I call. “Aunt, over here!”

I wait, straining to hear. I think of turning my ears into those of a bat or a wolf, but I haven't changed myself, not a bit, since I came to the clearing. I haven't risked it.

There's silence in the woods. The owl swivels his head back; the little ones turn too, all still.

And then: “Marni? Marni, is that you?”

“Yes, it's me!” I call. “Come this way!”

The crashing starts again, but it's moving toward me now, and then she comes into view, my uncle's wife, dressed all in plain dark cotton, her hair piled up on her head. She starts running as soon as she sees me, or as near to running as she can get through the underbrush. She's leading two fine mares—the gray I used to go out riding on with Edgar, and a white.

They come into the clearing, and she throws out her arms, reins and all, to fold me into a hug.

“Aunt,” I gasp. “Aunt, what are you doing here?”

“Oh, my dear,” she says, pulling back to hold me at arm's length.

For half a moment, looking at her brilliant smile, it's as though I never went to the woods at all, but live still in my uncle's castle, in the care of his queen. I find my eyes tearing up for some fool reason.

“Oh, my dear, I wasn't sure I'd ever find you.”

I shake my head. “In these woods, Aunt, you'd be lucky not to get yourself lost instead.”

“Yes, well.” She lets me go. “To be perfectly truthful, Marni, I didn't feel there was another choice.”

“You haven't—you haven't
run away to the woods?
” I'm gaping at her, I know. It's the most unlikely thing I can think of—my uncle's practical wife, taking herself to the monsters.